Sleeping Beauty 1959

[7.7/10] I braced myself when cueing up Sleeping Beauty. Surely a Disney fairy tale about magical romance, one made sixty years ago no less, would rankle modern sensibilities. Undoubtedly, it would be a bunch of old-fashioned hogwash, the likes of which have been subverted and parodied time and again by Disney itself in films like Frozen and Enchanted.

And some of it is and does! This is a love at first sight (or at least first sound) movie. Princes and Princesses are paired off at birth. Aurora herself, the titular slumbering looker, is barely a character, stripped of nearly any agency in the story, which should consign her film to the tut-tutting corner of “My, how far we’ve come.” But then a strange realization erupts across the mind -- despite the title, this isn’t really Sleeping Beauty’s story; it’s the fairies’.

Flora, Fauna, and Merriweather -- the tricolor sprites who protect, raise, and love Aurora -- are the movers and shakers of the film. They’re the ones who give her the gifts of beauty and song and spare her from the enchantress’s curse. They’re the ones who decide to spirit her away and raise her as their own to keep her from misfortune until the magical blight has passed. They’re the ones who suspend the kingdom in sleep and free the prince and guide him to the true love that will break the spell once and for all. Ignore the title, Sleeping Beauty belongs to a trio of magical, middle-aged gals with the pluck and gumption to save the day.

Disney highlights that magic in one of the studio’s most visually stunning films. Apart from a few of the more realistic designs that match 1950s ideals rather than more modern ones, the aesthetics of the picture are all but indistinguishable from the superlative visuals of the later Renaissance films. There is such care and wonder layered into every scene, from intricate backgrounds to delightful character movements, which evoke that sense of pixie dust in every frame.

It begins with the film’s colors. The hot pinks and blue hues of the enchanted kingdom mark it as a wondrous place long before the fairies show up. The contrasting slimy, neon green and purple tones that lace Maleficent’s castles and caverns catch the eye at every turn. A war of colors between Flora and Merriwether injects brightly colored levity into scenes both silly and sentimental. There’s a painter’s touch to each facet of the presentation, with masterful mixes of different shades to lavish the viewer.

The same extends to the lighting, for lack of a better term, in the movie. There’s something deceptively simple about the sequence where Aurora follows Maleficent’s beaming orb of light through a darkened staircase. But the subtle effect of the orb’s glow as it lights up each stone step and passes its rays through mordant corners of the tower is nothing short of stunning. Likewise, the way the fairies’ hues shift to reflect the blackened skies over the witch’s forbidden mountain, or the firelight of her dragon’s breath, show such attention to detail and add a sense of realness amid this fable.

But nothing is realer than the movements of the characters. Aurora and Philip, as the film’s two young lovers, bear the most resemblance to actual humans, and it may very well be the peak of the studio’s rotoscoped approach. There is a naturalness to their movements, a complexity to their gestures, that makes them feel like genuine people while not detracting from the fairytale setting.

In an equal and opposite way, the more fanciful players in the piece still move with weight and rhythms that give them substance beyond typical cartoon characters. The fairies are exaggerated figures, but still have a set of physics and rules of movement all their own. The two kings and putative father-in-laws have their own set of amplified gesticulations and animations, but they too move with a gravity and heightened reality that gives them pop and character. Little touches from a minstrel’s spindly dancing legs to the macabre flails of Maleficent’s goons showcase the fabulous animation that completely suffuses Sleeping Beauty

That’s the thing -- there’s so much character to this movie. King Stefan and King Hubert are a pair of bumbling but lovable old dads. As flat as Aurora and Philip are as characters, each gets a little hint of rebellion and playfulness to cement their chemistry. The now-trademark woodland critters have expressive faces that make them work as parasocial pals for the title character. The fairies have a unique dynamic among themselves, and Maleficent has an unctuous by undeniably cool style.

It’s no coincidence that she has become arguably the most iconic element of the movie. From her velvet-tongued curses and glowering pronouncements, to her spectacular lights show at every appearance and disappearance, the Mistress of Evil rocks. A sop to future goth kids everywhere, her shadowy walls and swamplight pallor make an instant impression, even more than half a century later.

The wrinkle is that she is as much the fairies’ antagonist as she is to the various monarchs who are nominally the subjects of the movie. It’s not Aurora who struggles against Maleficent’s magic; she’s just its unwitting victim. Instead it’s Flora, Fauna, and Merriweather who aim to institute a countercurse, who accidentally alert her raven amid a magic squabble, who turn her minions’ attacks into bubbles and rainbows, and who gift Philip the implements necessary to defeat the sorceress in the thrilling final battle.

But more than just driving the story, it’s their emotions that move it along too. For as simple as the story is, there’s a surprisingly effective emotional contingent to it. There’s highs of births and betrothals, mixed with curses and lost loves, buoyed by triump and reunion. The fairies are the vessels for it all, moved by their attachment to the young woman they raised and determined to set things right. They don’t always think things through, but their hearts are always in the right place, adding extra oomph to both the drama and the humor.

That makes for a surprisingly modern approach, one that elides a layer of uncomfortability to a tale of destined lovers who meet once in a glen and then are prepped to be married off and start producing grandchildren. Sleeping Beauty herself may get the title, but the film’s really about her three surrogate moms who squabble, bumble, and jostle one another from time to time, but who love their adoptive daughter and do everything they can to protect her. That story is remarkable ahead of its time, the type we still rarely see today. For however much Disney’s princess fairy tales set the stage for a legion of spoofs and subversions in the decades to come, the originator has a sidewise, subtly progressive approach all its own.